A Little Yellow Dog

20

I knew a shorter route to the Hollywood station but I trailed behind Sanchez’s unmarked car anyway. I wanted to know what he was thinking. I didn’t have faith that anyone would care for me. The only chance I had, I believed, was to make sure that nobody could bring me down.

Sanchez parked at a blue curb painted with big white letters that read FOR OFFICIAL POLICE BUSINESS ONLY! When I passed by he tooted his horn and pointed that I should park in front of him. I made a U-turn and nosed up in front of his black Chevrolet. He was waiting for me with a blue-and-red cardboard sign that had a long code number printed on it.

“Here, put this on your dashboard,” he said. “They’ll leave it alone then.”

The number reminded me of an arrest ID. When I put it down I was hoping that I wouldn’t meet its brother inside.

We went in through the large garage doors; a black man and a brown one strolling through a cavern full of white cops.

“Can I do something for you?” the first cop we ran into asked.

“Sergeant Sanchez,” my escort replied. He had his ID out and ready.

“Okay,” the towheaded cop said suspiciously. “Where you going?”

“Captain Fogherty wants to see us,” Sanchez said without a trace of anger in his voice.

“Where’s your badge?” the patrolman then asked me. He knew from the way I was dressed I didn’t have one but he just couldn’t let us go. I noticed that policemen were standing around their cars, and up on a high curb, looking at us.

“It’s at the cleaners,” I said. “Gettin’ a touch-up and a shine.”

“What?” The cop made a motion with his shoulder. He wanted to do something but hadn’t decided on what — yet.

My heart started moving blood at a fast pace. I gritted my teeth and watched the white man’s light brown eyes.

Sanchez stepped between us.

“Mr. Rawlins isn’t a police officer,” he said. “He’s here to advise the captain on the Gasteau killing.”

The policeman’s smile reminded me of Pharaoh. “That’s what happens when we let your kind up here,” he said.

I could think of five answers; only two of them involved words.

“Can we go on, Officer…” Sanchez looked closely at the flat badge under the officer’s shield. “Peters?”

Patrolman Peters stepped sideways and we went through the pair of swinging double doors behind him. The doors opened into a long, light-lime-colored hall. It was lit by bright lights in semiopaque glass bowls that were screwed into the ceiling.

We walked the length of the hall and then turned left down another, even longer hall. There were no doors along the way, just the tunnel.

A large roach scuttled down the corridor past us. He was scared, it seemed, and was hell-bent to get away from the direction we were headed.

“How long have you been sergeant?” I asked Sanchez.

I figured that I wasn’t a prisoner, or a criminal, and so I could speak freely.

But Sanchez didn’t see it that way. Either that or he was deaf.

Or maybe he was concentrating. The tunnels under the jail crisscrossed often, going off at various angles.

We turned and then turned again.

Each corridor was less green and more yellow. At the end of the final passage was a large iron door with a small portal fitted with extra-thick, bulletproof glass.

Through the glass we could see another door, this one like a cell door, formed from bars. On the other side of the bars was another, older police officer. When Sanchez tapped his badge on the glass the guardian looked up slowly. Sanchez showed his ID at the window. The older man got up, rummaged around a large metal key loop. There were only four keys but he had to try every one to open the barred door. He walked across the metal chamber, to the door that we stood behind, and peered at us.

He made a movement with his hand saying that he wanted to see Sanchez’s ID again. He looked at the picture for a long time and then started fumbling with the keys again.

After four attempts I heard the key slip into a lock and turn, but the door didn’t come open. The elder cop went back across the chamber. It wasn’t until he was safely locked away that he reached under his desk and pulled on something. A loud click went off in the door we were standing before and Sanchez pushed it open.

We entered the ironclad chamber.

“Shut it behind you,” the guard/cop said.

Sanchez obliged.

“What do you want?” the guard then asked.

“I’m taking Mr. Rawlins here to see Captain Fogherty.”

The cop looked hard at me. “He under arrest?”

“No.”

“Why’d you come this way?”

“This is the way the captain said to come.”

Another long look.

“Okay,” he said, and he fumbled with the keys.

Beyond him was another metal door that had to be unlocked. And beyond that was the dim-lit room of cages. Twelve boxes of crosshatched bars with a man, or two, in every cell. When we came into the room I could see, through the grated floor, another twelve cells below. The steel latticed ceiling revealed an upper cellblock. They all wore drab green pants that had the word PRISONER stenciled on them in dark red dye, and matching T-shirts. Each man stared silently, wondering if our presence there had to do with their case. They stared from their cots, or standing at the crosshatched bars, or squatting down on the steel toilet seat. They had nothing to hide, nothing to say.

Just thirty or so men living in cages underground. Like livestock waiting for some further shame to be laid on them. Like sharecroppers or slaves living in shanty shacks on the edge of a plantation.

There was evil in that room, and on that plantation too. Because, as I knew too well, if you’re punished long enough you become guilty of all charges brought against you.

“Mistah.”

It was a hoarse whisper. The man who called was black. He was half crouching, half lying at the grid cell door. The white of his left eye was full of bright blood. His nose was so swollen that he was gasping open-mouthed. There was blood coming from his mouth and you could see that he was missing teeth. I couldn’t tell if he had lost them in the fight or at some earlier time.

“Mistah.”

I slowed.

It was hard to tell through the bruises and the blood but I didn’t think that the man had reached twenty-five. Hefty but not loose, he’d taken off his shirt to mop the blood and sweat from his face.

Behind him, at the back of the cell, was another young man. This one, also black, was long and lean with his legs stretched out and crossed on the cot where he reclined. He was in repose with open eyes and the satisfied smugness of a bully in his face.

“Help me, mistah,” the beaten man begged. “Tell’em t’lemme outta here.”

“Come on, Rawlins,” Sanchez said at my back.

“What’s that?” the lanky bully said.

The beaten man cringed at the crackling sound of his tormentor’s voice.

The bully sat up. He had the name Jones stitched over the left breast of his prison shirt but I doubted that that was his name.

“Get back over here, Felix,” Jones said. And then, “I’ma count to three. One…”

Felix looked up at me.

“…two…”

Felix flinched and went, on his knees, to Jones’s feet. Jones looked across the cell, through the grating, and smiled at me. He was also missing a few teeth.

Jones stepped out of his shoes.

“Get the fuck up in yo’ motherfuckin’ bed an’ spit-shine my goddam motherfuckin’ shoes,” he said. When Felix didn’t move fast enough Jones bent down and socked him on the ear.

“Don’t hit me again!” Felix shouted.

“Then get up in that bed an’ shine’em. An’ you better not get no blood on the motherfuckers.” To make the job harder Jones punched Felix in the nose, bringing blood and tears.

Jones had his back to us.

He talked to Felix but the words were meant for me.

“You think that man gonna help you? That what you think, Felix? Well, just as soon as they gone I’ma whip yo’ ass good. I’ma give you such a ass-kickin’ you gonna wish you had kep’it quiet. An’ that man bettah hope I never catch his punk ass out in the street. He bettah hope not.”

“Come on, Rawlins,” Sanchez said. “We’ll report it to the guard.”

Through the next cell door portal we saw two guards. They stood behind yet another barred doorway. They flipped a switch and we came through the first door.

Both men were beefy and balding. One squinted while the other had rosy cheeks. They took Sanchez’s badge through the bars and set it down on a table behind them.

Neither one had said a word.

“Well?” Sanchez asked.

The one on the left squinted at his partner’s bright cheeks.

I was thinking about Felix, wondering if his shouts could be heard through steel.

“What are you trying to pull, son?” Squinty asked back.

There was a steel door behind me, a steel door in front of me, and for some reason I couldn’t catch a deep breath.

“You better get back to your cells, boys, until we can check this out,” said the red-cheeked man. “Pop the locks of seventeen and twenty-four, Ron.”

A spasm went up my spine but Sanchez held still. He stared at the men. Ron finally blinked and reached for the keys. He got them as far as the lock and then stopped.

“You sure you belong here, Pancho?” he asked.

His partner snickered and then they both laughed.

Ron unlocked the door and swung it open. My breath was waiting for me across the threshold.

Applecheeks was clapping Sanchez on the back.

“Just a joke, amigo,” he was saying.

“There’s a fight going on in one of the cells back there,” Sanchez replied. “One of them is getting beaten up pretty bad.”

“Oh,” the cop said. “Two niggers?”

“I think somebody could get hurt,” Sanchez said with emphasis.

The policeman turned to his partner and asked, “What time is it, Bob?”

Bob had to hold his wristwatch at arm’s length to read the dial. “Three-fifteen.”

“Oh. I’ll tell you what, amigo,” the cop called Ron said to Sanchez. “It’s only half an hour until the next shift comes in. If we have to charge somebody it’ll take an hour at least. But we’ll tell the next shift when they get here.”

There was nothing left to say and so we left Felix to his fate.

We went down another long hall that actually went from one building to another. The next building was the old police station. The halls became more slender with woodwork around the doors. We took a staircase up two flights and then down another hall. In this passage sunlight shone in through open doors and illuminated the frosted windows of closed ones. At the far end was our destination. The brass plate on the door said “Captain Josiah Fogherty.”

“Come in.”

It was a small room, barely large enough for the junk-piled desk and folding chairs propped up next to the door. Not a captain’s office at all.

Fogherty had a full mane of silver hair and drooping eyelids that were sad and smiling at the same time. His skin was darkish but not by race, or the sun. He had the look of a dusk to dawn drinker; whiskey without a mixer if my imagination was correct. He wore no wedding band and his white shirt was too wrinkled, even for a cop, with one too many stains poking out from underneath his brown jacket. He looked up at us with a smile that could have been a mourner’s valiant attempt to console a bereaved widow.

“Sergeant,” he said to Sanchez even though he was looking at me.

“Rawlins,” Sanchez answered.

“Sit down, sit down.” Fogherty gestured at his poor chairs.

We unfolded our seats.

“Mr. Rawlins works…” Sanchez went right into his story.

Fogherty held up his hands to stall the speech. He picked up the receiver to his phone and pressed a big green button down under the dial. After waiting for a few seconds he said, “You got four-A ready yet? Okay. Uh-huh, sure. Yes, that’s right,” and then hung up.

He raised his head and nodded at Sanchez to continue.

“This is Mr. Rawlins,” the sergeant said. “He works out at the school where the victim’s wife teaches.”

“Terrible, isn’t it, Mr. Rawlins?” Fogherty said to me.

“Sure is,” I said with as much feeling as I could muster.

“We see it every day, you know,” he added, nodding wise. “Household spat that gets out of hand is most of it. Good friends that drink too much, maybe with the other friend’s wife, and then, bang — somebody’s dead.” When he smiled I realized that my trip through the bowels of the jailhouse had been calculated to break me down.

“You wanted something from me, captain?”

“Did you know Holland Gasteau?”

“No, sir. Idabell and I are just work friends.”

“Do you know where she could be?”

“No, sir. I don’t.” I was as sincere as a man can get. But that didn’t mean a thing to them.

An honest cop, when asked by a judge, “Did the sun set in the west that day, officer?” will answer, “I believe so, your honor,” and leave the truth for the court to decide.

Fogherty smiled.

A uniformed police officer stuck his head into the room.

“Four-A is ready, sir,” the officer said.

“You get all five?” Fogherty asked.

“No, sir. All we could manage was the four.”

“Damn,” Fogherty hissed.

It was the same word that was at the back of my mouth.

“You know, you could do me a favor, Rawlins.” If you were to believe the wonder on the captain’s face it was the first time he thought of what he was about to ask me.

“What?”

“We’re having a lineup. It’s nothing. But the guy is colored, see, and we’d like to have a good mix up there — you know, to make it fair.”

“What’s it for?” I asked.

“Murder,” said Fogherty.

Sanchez was looking at my eyes.

THEY HAD PUT UP a plasterboard wall to divide a small basement room. I was ushered into one side by Fogherty and Sanchez. There were three uniformed white cops and six black men, all of them dressed casually, except for the manacles that two of them wore.

Fogherty had the prisoners released from their chains. The real wall had evenly spaced vertical black lines drawn along it forming man-sized rectangles that had numbers across the top: 1–2—3—4–5—6. We were all told to stand up against the wall and under a number.

“What the fuck you got me here for?” one of the prisoners complained. “I told ya I been sick. I ain’t done a damn thing.”

“You want to go back down the hall?” a policeman asked in way of reply.

I noticed then that both of the men who had been manacled were bruised around their faces.

From the central vantage point of number three I looked up and down the row. No two of us bore the slightest resemblance. The shortest was five foot six while the tallest was a full three inches taller than I am, a shade over six feet. There was yellow, gray, brown, and black skin. Our faces spoke of the variety of peoples of Africa and of the white masters who raped those ancestors. The tallest man weighed maybe one eighty — so did the shortest.

It was a setup, but I still had some points on my side. We were still a row of Negroes — and white folks, on the whole, could barely tell us apart.

That old white lady hadn’t gotten a clear look at me leaving Idabell’s. I’d hidden my face upon leaving the house, distracted her with my keys, changed my height.

I was innocent.

“Face forward, number three.”

A panel of six large floodlights flared from the ceiling; they were hot on my skin.

“What’re you lookin’ up for, boy?” The cop was young; his accent at home in the northeast somewhere. The derogatory words sounded odd on his tongue but the meaning was clear.

I was back, suddenly, in the Deep South. All feeling drained out of my body and my face went lax. My eyes felt nothing, my mouth had no words or expression. I was empty of all past doings. I had no future. I stood up straight and presented my face toward the wall, but still, it wasn’t me standing there. Easy had gone undercover and there was no bringing him out.

There were peepholes drilled into the wall opposite us. I noticed them without seeming to see. My mind was back on a hot swampland road, back in the days when I could have disappeared, in half a moment’s notice, from any job or town or girlfriend. Back to a time when the rear door was the only door — and it was never locked.

A number was asked to step forward and then another. When my turn came I stood out under the hot lights and stared right into them.

In the beginning… The words came into my mind and I was my own master.

The floodlights cut off, leaving just the overheads. Suddenly it was darker and cool.

“You can go out now,” the eastern bigot said.

I followed the line into the adjoining room. The prisoners were clapped back into chains and led off to their cages. The other men just left.

I made to leave too.

“Rawlins.” It was Fogherty.

He and Sanchez approached me with serious faces.

I realized, with a scared shock, that I had forgotten my lawyer’s phone number.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Fogherty asked. He was no longer friendly or sad.

“Home.”

“Our witness thought that he recognized you, Rawlins.”

I knew when he said it that the lineup had failed; that Fogherty and Sanchez were trying to scare me, or to see how hard it was to shake my tree.

I knew that I shouldn’t show too much fear or they’d think I was guilty. The best thing for an Honest John to do would be to stutter out a “Wha?” That way I could seem the innocent kind of scared.

“The hell you say,” I said instead. “I didn’t do anything for anybody to see.”

“Maybe they saw you afterwards,” Fogherty speculated.

“Bullshit,” I said. “I wasn’t anywhere but work or home. If somebody saw me in one’a those places I’d be glad to confess to workin’ or feedin’ my kids.”

“I don’t have to let you out of here, Rawlins,” Fogherty said. “You could be down in that cellblock that you came through.”

I was still defiant but his threat had numbed my tongue.

Fogherty’s smile was demented. “Yeah. Sanchez told me that you saw Felix Wren down in his cell.” Fogherty watched me and nodded, sagelike. “He’s only in on a drunk driving charge but he resisted the arresting officers — bit one of them. Don’t worry about him though, he’ll be okay. We won’t even charge him. Once he gets his last tooth knocked out we’ll send him back home to his mother.”

That was the first moment I felt murder in my fingers. It’s not that I wanted to kill Fogherty particularly. I could have killed anybody.

I turned and went toward a door with a red-and-white EXIT sign above it.

“We know you’re in it, Rawlins,” Fogherty said to my back.

I kept going, following the EXIT signs.

Nobody stopped me or even noticed as I made my way through the station. Somewhere on the lineup I had become invisible again. I’d taken on the shadows that kept me camouflaged, and dangerous.